SOURCE: "At the Mermaid," in The New York Times, April 20, 1913, p. 237.

Kilmer's review of Tales of the Mermaid Tavern suggests that this collection of poems elevates Noyes from a "jingle" writer to a place beside the "English Masters. "

Generalizations are dangerous things. For instance, we are told over and over that this is an age of prose, "an age," according to William Watson, "that banishes the poets; scourges them with the scourge of apathy, from out her bosom's rich metropolis." The poet, it is said, has no longer an audience. We humbly accept this judgment, and long for the vanished days when Byron lived in luxury and Moore built country houses out of "Lalla Rookh." Then, in the face of all this, there appears a young man decently dressed and seemingly well-fed, with no visible means of support except poetry. Is there no generalization to account for this...